Overview of Pharma Content Marketing

Content marketing is an inbound strategy that focuses on creating and sharing content to reach your target audience and inspire them to take a specific action. For companies that serve the pharma industry, this approach can yield significant benefits because it offers a non-invasive way to provide value and educate your audience.

What distinguishes content marketing from other forms of marketing? Value. While traditional advertising approaches can educate or inspire, the difference is that they are outbound tactics—their goal is to push a message out. Content marketing works to attract an audience and provide something they’re seeking. By adding value to interactions with prospective clients, they are more likely to trust you and, ultimately, do business with you.

Pharmaceutical companies are actively looking for ways to solve their most pressing problems. Content marketing allows you to articulate the challenges these companies are facing and demonstrate the effectiveness of your solutions without relying on pushy sales techniques.

The Best Types of Content for Targeting Pharmaceutical Companies

What type of content is best for reaching your target audience? The answer depends on your goals for content marketing. Articles are a good option for increasing your visibility while white papers focus on educating your audience.

Learn more about the best types of content marketing for reaching prospective pharmaceutical clients:

Whether they take the form of blog posts housed on your company’s website or appear in trade publications, articles are often the best option for businesses who are just beginning to use content marketing.

Producing an article is relatively easy, quick, and cost-effective and offers the added benefit of generating inbound traffic and leads for your business. 

Most articles, if written correctly, are evergreen, which means once created, they will drive increasing results over time. These articles can also be repurposed into other forms of content, providing a valuable way to make the most of your investment.

If you want to produce meaningful articles, however, you need the rare combination of subject matter expertise and writing chops. Without professional help developing actionable, engaging content, your efforts may fall flat.

White papers are specially suited to a pharma audience because they offer a deep dive into a particular topic, educate your audience, articulate your solutions, and showcase your expertise.

With a white paper, you can explore important topics more thoroughly than with articles while also increasing your company’s visibility. Based on the significance of a topic, a white paper helps you stand out from the competition with an expert opinion. And most white papers are evergreen in nature, which means once created, they’ll drive traffic and extend your reach for years to come.

On the flip side, white paper papers can be difficult and time-consuming to produce on your own, requiring the ability to translate subject matter expertise into content that’s readable and valuable. 

While white papers can educate your audience, unless professionally produced, it’s easy for concepts and solutions to get buried in minutia. 

Case studies provide you with the opportunity to detail an important accomplishment and the steps you took to achieve it. By including specifics about your accomplishment, such as how much revenue your efforts produced, you can demonstrate to potential clients exactly what you bring to the table. This also leads to increased brand visibility since success generates buzz.

Generally, case studies are also very engaging due to their results and success oriented nature, meaning the vast majority of readers will consume all of the included content. 

If you have an expertly-crafted template, it’s relatively quick and easy to produce a case study, often requiring minimal investment. But without a template it can become time-consuming and complicated to communicate information impactfully.

The creation of a compelling study hinges on your brand’s past achievements and successes, meaning new companies and startups may not have the wins necessary to create a case study.

Videos are quickly becoming visitors’ preferred method for consuming content. A strong video that quickly and clearly articulates your company’s services and value-add can go a long way toward instilling trust in prospective clients and educating your audience. 

Additionally, a video can also be easily shared on social media, increasing your brand’s exposure and expanding your audience. 

Great videos can be expensive to produce, often requiring a larger investment than other forms of content. But in-house efforts to create videos often result in low quality that can damage your brand image and credibility. 

Videos can be difficult to create, often requiring the coordination of a multitude of experts with varying skill sets. But, teaming up with a partner experienced in video production for pharma audiences, is a cost-effective and time-saving way to produce compelling videos for your brand.

Ebooks present an opportunity to educate your audience in a thorough, in-depth way. Offering a deep dive into your solutions or an industry problem increases your credibility and provides compelling proof that you know what prospective clients need. This is particularly important for a pharmaceutical audience because of the length of drug development and the enormous capital tied up in producing new drugs. 

Ebooks can be easily reused and updated with new developments in the industry, making them cost-efficient to produce. An ebook can be more compelling than other pieces of written content thanks to its length, format, and including graphics and visual elements.

While great evergreen assets to add to your content arsenal, ebooks can be fairly difficult and time-consuming to produce. Their value for reaching prospective clients will depend on your target audience and your area of expertise. Ebooks need to be carefully structured with engaging language that distills difficult concepts into understandable language.

A pithy presentation to introduce your company or highlight a solution is an easily shareable asset that can be used again and again to educate your audience and spread the word about the value you add to engagements with pharma companies. Presentations (done well) can resonate better with certain audiences than other forms of content.

Presentations remain a popular way for professionals in the healthcare industry to consume content. Platforms like SlideShare that allow people to showcase their presentations as a learning tool have breathed new life into slideshows. 

With visually engaging elements and appropriate copy, presentations can fill the gap for companies that can’t afford video production. 

While a great resource for offering to your audience, integrating presentations into your content marketing strategy requires some careful planning around what to include and how to balance engagement with the information presented.

Presentations should include enough content to be valuable to the target audience, but not as much as an article or other in-depth piece. Striking the balance between visual and written components can be difficult without the help of an experienced partner.

(Check out our library of SlideShares to see how we generated thousands of organic views.)

Infographics are a compelling piece of content that effectively conveys difficult information to your audience. It also demonstrates industry knowledge and expertise, building trust and authority in your brand.

Due to its visual and digestible nature, infographics are also very shareable on social media platforms, often becoming viral and rapidly generating significant exposure.

Infographics can be very challenging to create, often requiring in-depth data collection, analysis, and condensation, which requires notable industry knowledge and expertise to perform. 

Infographics also have a very limited scope of delivery if created improperly. This is because conventional infographics are not viewable properly on the small screens of handheld devices. This fact coupled with the very long turn-around time makes it difficult to implement without adequate experience in content marketing.

Webinars build authority and trust through interactive and transparent events. Audience participation also creates networking opportunities and builds up leads for more lucrative contracts. 

Generally, a webinar is very simple to run, requiring a minimal but properly configured setup and equipment. Webinars are a cost-effective way to produce videos without long production and editing.

Webinars may run into technical difficulties and connectivity issues, adding some unpredictability to success. If you’re not prepared to deal with them, your efforts can be derailed. 

Live webinars keep the audience more engaged through Q&As, chat, and screensharding. Pre-recorded webinars require an extra measure of on-camera energy and enthusiasm to retain audience attention. 

Webinars created without outside help often fall flat because they fail to provide viewers with the right information or to reach the level of interactivity required to keep viewers interested.

Original research into an area of your expertise is often highly valued by your prospective clients. By delving into areas of interest for your target audience, you can elevate your brand's   authority and visibility, helping you stand out within your industry.

This type of content also generates exceptional leads and can be used as a body of information that fuels countless other content types.

Original research also provides wide-spread exposure, which often attracts the attention of industry journals and other media outlets. 

Often, original research stands out as a hallmark of your company, fostering brand recognition and trust.

Despite many benefits, original research can be difficult and time-consuming to produce without the appropriate frameworks and experience. Deciding what to research and how to do it, then executing a plan can take months or even years if left to in-house personnel. 

Another difficulty of original research is turning it into a resource that can be understood by your audience. You must not only conduct research but draw out the most important insights.

Original studies can also fail to attract attention if they don’t interest or offer value to your target audience. This makes it important to select the right focus for your research to ensure it powers your content marketing efforts.

Interviews are a great way to add a human dimension to impersonal content while also establishing and conveying your desired brand image. 

An interview lends itself well to be re-used in other forms of content and can serve as the cornerstone in your content marketing strategy. Without much time investment, you can speak with individuals from across the industry to get their perspective and insights on topics relevant to your brand.

Interviews are also flexible in terms of the format and equipment needed. An interview can be as easy as an email exchange or as complex as a video. 

The type of interview you arrange - phone, email, video - will determine the equipment needed. While video requires more setup than other interview types, today’s technology makes it relatively easy to interview anyone on the globe (if you have the know-how to do so).

One challenge involved in interviews is knowing how to use them as part of your larger content marketing strategy. Publishing interviews as-is may not be as effective as distilling the main points of interview and crafting multiple content pieces around those points.

Companies without experience conducting interviews also face the complication of asking the right questions and following-up to get to the heart of an issue.

It can also be time-consuming to produce an interview without enough experience, especially if your format requires transcription and captioning.

Templates and frameworks are a simple way to leave a favorable impression on your prospects by providing immediate and actionable value. They also build authority and traction within your industry, doubling as a free opportunity to advertise your brand.

A template is not a one-size-fits-all-solution, so it might not align with the needs of your entire audience. Segmenting your audience by their respective problems and creating template to address each of those problems is a great way to harness the power of templates.

That said, templates can be tricky to create without prior experience. While they’re not as heavy a lift as other types of content, it’s easy to waste time creating a resource no one will find useful. Having an outside partner assist you with the creation of templates and frameworks can bypass the learning curve and save your brand time and wasted internal resources.

Podcasts are one of the most popular forms of content on the internet today due to their highly engaging and personal nature. Through open and informative discussions, podcasts also build trust and familiarity with your audience, nurturing better leads in the long term.

A podcast is very accessible, allowing your audience to tune in from anywhere on most devices. Podcasts are often consumed in their entirety, with many audience members listening to back-to-back episodes. 

Podcasts are very easy to produce with the appropriate equipment and software, but the setup, configuration, and editing requires considerable technical knowledge. A low-quality podcast may, at best, be a waste of resources and, at worse, damage your brand’s value in the eyes of your audience.

Podcasts also require a team member who is well-spoken and engaging. Companies without such a person may find their podcasts fall flat.

Perhaps most importantly, your podcast must have a purpose or focus. Without knowing the goal of your podcast and how you both stand out and offer value to your audience, your podcast will go nowhere fast.

Ready to Get Started?

If you’re ready to get started creating content that will convert your audience into clients, contact us today. We specialize in developing content and strategically publishing and promoting it for maximum impact.